


Master and Apprentice

by Megaptera



Category: Diablo II
Genre: Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:04:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megaptera/pseuds/Megaptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally published as "A Moldy Tome" under my previous pen name Indefatigable. Prequel to Diablo II: Lord of Destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vermin

To look at him, nobody would think the old man could move as fast as he did that morning.

Walking stick in one hand and wand in the other, he burst from the kitchen onto the garden path, frightening a pair of doves into twittering flight. There -- something moved among the leaves, too big to be a badger or a raccoon (and neither a badger nor a raccoon would carry a blade to slice a melon from a vine so cleanly).

He aimed and muttered a curse. The mist formed and flew to its target; something struggled and thrashed briefly between the rows of aubergines, and finally lay still.

He took his time picking his way between the plants.

"Now -- " he snapped as he stepped over a row of squash, and then, "Good grief!" His concentration broke and the mist vanished, releasing its prisoner. The boy lay flat on his back in the mud, panting, and as soon as he knew he was free, he was up and over the fence and away into the woods like a rabbit.

The old man stared after him. He’d expected a boy, but not one the spitting image of himself at that age -- white skin and whiter hair under all that mud, ice-blue eyes, sharp features and a thin frame. Changeling was the word he’d heard people use jokingly behind his back when he was young, but he’d learned better since then.

He trudged back into the cottage, put the bread and cheese he’d already sliced into a bowl, and took it back out past the edge of the garden. "Come and eat this, lad," he called as he set it on a flat rock at the edge of the forest, "before the raccoons think I've had a change of heart."


	2. The Talk

“Why don’t you use magic?” said the boy, through chattering teeth.

The old man stopped swearing at the fireplace full of damp wood, put down the tinder-box, and looked at him.

“I know you can. You used it on me once.” Now that he had said it, there was no turning back. He took a deep breath and blurted, “I can too.”

“Can you light a fire with it?”

“Uh -- no.”

“It’s not the right kind of magic, is it?”

“Mine’s not. Wait, is mine the same as -- is it -- ”

“Same as mine, I should think.” He picked up the tinderbox again.

The boy grabbed the kettle and darted back out into the dusk to fill it with snow. When he returned, the old man was carefully replacing the grate before a small but promising flame.

* * * * *

They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, wrapped in woolen blankets, the old man privately wishing he was still young enough to curl up and sit on his feet like that.

The boy looked at him through the rising steam over his wooden teacup. “So you already knew that I was -- that I’m a -- ?”

“From the first time I laid eyes on you. You’re only the third one I’ve ever met, not including myself.”

“The third...” He struggled to find the right word. “W-witch? Mage?”

“Oh, I’ve met more assorted mages than you can carry in one basket. Necromancers, though... they’re a little harder to find.”

The boy half-mouthed the word and said aloud, “I don’t know what that is.”

The old man jerked a thumb at his own chest, and then pointed a long finger at the boy. “You do now.”

He took a sip from his teacup and sloshed the last few mouthfuls around in the bottom of it, idly peering at the leaves, and waiting for the boy to say something. When he got no response, he raised his eyes again. The boy was staring back at him with his fingers clenched around his own cup.

“Good thing I gave you that cup. You'd have broken this one. Can you read?”

“Can I -- yes, I can read.” The boy's voice cracked in surprise.

“Good! That’ll make things easier. My books are all quite recent translations, except for the scrolls I picked up from that rug merchant in Ureh. Though it’s not as if modern Kehjistani is terribly different from what it was when these were originally -- ”

“To learn how to be a -- necromancer?”

Faintly amused by the interruption, but aware of the taint of panic in the boy’s voice, the old man spoke gently. “To learn how to use the powers you were born with. Yes.”

“I don’t want to use them!”

The walls of the cottage had never before heard a voice raised to that volume.

"Not again," the boy rasped into the silence after. "Not anymore."

“I’m going to hazard a guess,” said the old man, very quietly, “that you wish you’d known something about them sooner.”

The boy seemed like a feral animal again, frozen with terror and ready to bolt for the wilderness. But he looked the old man in the eye and nodded once, quickly.

“Then wouldn’t you agree that the responsible thing, right now, would be to learn more?”


	3. Snails

“Do snails have souls?”

The boy stood in the doorway, his fingers white-knuckled around an upside-down boot as he studied something crushed against its muddy bottom.

The old man put aside the blanket he was patching. “You've been reading Karuna. I was starting to wonder what was eating at you.”

He shoved a second chair out from under the table and poured another cup of tea. The boy gingerly laid the boot outside on the garden path and almost forgot to take off the other one before coming inside to join him at the table.

For a long time they were both silent, and finally the old man said, “She was just one old mage, you know, so take her with a grain of salt – she wrote down ideas that she got from what she'd read, and those fellows who wrote before her did the same, all the way back to Rathma.”

“But some of it's true. We can see it for ourselves.”

The old man sipped his tea. “Yes.”

“Then – why – should we live, if we cause death?” His voice wavered, challenging the forced composure in his face.

“Don't think I haven't asked myself that. Do you want to die?”

The boy pulled his folded arms close to his body, his shoulders hunched forward. He shook his head.

“Good. Me neither. Some do. I'd rather live and try to do as little harm as possible.”

The boy thought about that for a long moment. “You think you can help more than you hurt?” he said finally.

“That's the general idea.” The old man reached out and ruffled the boy's hair, and got up to retrieve elevenses from the breadbox.

By the time he came back to the table, the boy had not moved, but some of the tension was gone from around his eyes. The boy watched solemnly as the old man sliced radishes and peeled a few boiled eggs.

“Do eggs have souls?” he asked, with a sudden twitch of a smile that made him look less like a student of the black arts and more like a boy having irreverent thoughts.

“Not these eggs! The wards were meant to keep out foxes, but they seem to be just as good at keeping gentleman callers away from the ducks.”


End file.
